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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 19004813, member: 128351&quot;]There would be a lot to say about the allegories of France. The first known is seen on gold solidi of Constantine minted in Trier c. 313 showing a barbarian woman weeping at the foot of a trophy, wearing trousers and a pileus or &quot;phrygian cap&quot; (yes! already!), with FRANCIA in the exergue. This allegory is in fact the conventional image of a barbarian nation : she is strictly the same as DACIA, ALAMANNIA, etc...</p><p>The Marianne wearing a Phrygian cap is not France, she is Liberty. She is represented on French coins since the Revolution when the country was a republic (1792-1801, 1848-1851, 1870-1940 - well... not between 1870 and 1897 -, and since 1944) but you can find her as well on US coins since the late 18th c.</p><p>In France, Liberty wearing a Phrygian cap seems to have been judged too leftist in the early 3rd Republic in the 1870s. On coins the Phrygian cap was banned, and Liberty replaced by Ceres. It was the time when France offered a colossal statue of Liberty to the United states : it was OK for Liberty, but not wearing a Phrygian cap! This is why Bartholdi gave her a solar radiate crown. Marianne-Liberty with her Phrygian cap returned in 1897 and has been there since on French coins (with an unfortunate interruption from 1940 to 1944)...[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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